NATIONAL ORIGINS/Pine Barrens, N.J.; In the Fields, A Rhapsody In Blue

By MATT LEE and TED LEE

Published: August 9, 2000

HAMMONTON, N.J.—
THE inland heart of South Jersey is a vast national preserve, a million acres of former ocean bottom, now a primeval terrain of craggy pines and impenetrable forest scrub. It's strangely beautiful and fragrant flatland, but not a place anyone would expect to reap great harvests.

For almost a century, however, farms large and small have done just that. Sandwiched between showy Atlantic City and stately Philadelphia, the Pine Barrens of South Jersey is prime blueberry country. This lean, sandy and acidic soil puts forth about 40 million pounds of the berries, enough to make the state second only to Michigan in blueberry production. This summer's consistent, merciful weather -- which was dismal for corn and tomatoes -- was ideal for blueberries. It has been the best harvest in recent memory in Burlington County.

Every year, New Jersey blueberries dominate the market in New York from late June to mid-August, filling in between the first blueberries of summer, shipped up from Florida, and the last of the season, from Michigan. Twenty-seven other states and Canada produce the fruit in season, but in many ways, New Jersey is their true home, the place where the modern berry was developed and definitely where it thrives.

There's something irresistible about blueberries, and it shows on the freshly stained blue smiles of farmers, pickers, packers and executives who work in close proximity to them here. Blueberries have a gracefully subdued burst of sweetness that fades on the tongue and leaves you wanting more. Although berries early in the season are known for their size, and late ones for their intensity, nearly all blueberries achieve an easy balance of sweet and tart, a dewy, baritone berryness with a suggestion of cinnamon and a slightly tannic finish.

Few fruits fit as easily into summer meals. Their easy balance of sweet and tart brighten everything from breakfast granola and pancakes to sophisticated desserts like the elegant sour cream cake at March restaurant in Manhattan. Even better, they have recently been found to be especially beneficial to health.

Blueberries are a completely native American crop, but the kind most common today originated in the 1920's, when Elizabeth White, the enterprising daughter of a cranberry farmer in Pemberton, N.J., set out to improve upon the wild huckleberries that grew in the forest thickets and swamps. She selected cuttings and bred bushes that form the largest, sweetest-tasting berries, with the darkest blue color and the tiniest seeds. In collaboration with Dr. Frederick Coville, a botanist in the federal Agriculture Department, who had also been working to improve the huckleberry, she developed the modern blueberry. These are called high-bush blueberries to distinguish them from the wild, ground-hugging low-bush variety common in Maine and New England.

There are more than 30 varieties of cultivated blueberries, like Blue Crop, Chanticleer, Blue Jay and Weymouth, but they are nearly indistinguishable to the palate of the average consumer. Growers contend that in blind taste tests they can identify varieties, but blueberries are rarely segregated in harvesting. Variety serves primarily to give farmers as long a season as possible, since some varieties ripen earlier, some at the height of the season, roughly July 15 to July 30, and others late. Distinctions -- not only of variety, but of origin -- have become less and less apparent to consumers, now that blueberries are a year-round fruit, shipped in from South American countries like Chile in winter.

This season, you would be hard pressed to find American farmers in better circumstances than the blueberry growers here.

In Hammonton, a hundred pallets of blueberries, about 50,000 pounds, is barely a few hours' work for Dennis Doyle's team of roughly 1,000 pickers, who move down the rows with quick-fire efficiency, nudging each berry off the bush into a can or bucket, to be consolidated in sturdy yellow plastic lugs. Mr. Doyle, a former president of the Tru-Blu Cooperative in New Lisbon, N.J., which packages and markets berries, is the product manager for the Atlantic Blueberry Company, which bills itself as the largest family-run blueberry farm in the world. Its 1,300 acres produce nearly a quarter of the state's annual yield.

Sixty percent of Atlantic's business is in fresh blueberries, sorted and boxed in a warehouse alongside the fields. Most are destined for markets on the East Coast, within a day's drive of South Jersey. The rest are processed berries, the frozen blueberries that end up in a Mrs. Smith's blueberry pie or at the bottom of a Dannon yogurt cup.

Other blueberry farmers cater more to the pick-your-own market. Stanley Worrell, a spry 54-year-old with a joshing manner, has a 40-acre farm, a swatch of weedy white sand framed by pine forest. His Blue Crop plants, in straight, orderly rows, are rangy shrubs that grow to shoulder height at maturity. Stiff, slightly waxy green leaves partly conceal clusters of marble-size berries, whose color is equal parts indigo and battleship gray.